Choosing and Using Approaches to Teaching

Teachers in higher education come to teach from very diverse backgrounds with an uneven array of knowledge and skills. Until recently, few had any formal training in teaching in higher education. Many are, however, excellent teachers. Apprenticeship models, testing of natural abilities and the incidental acquiring of expertise in teaching have, for some, been effective learning processes. More recently academics in Australian universities have been attending various programmes or courses on teaching and learning in higher education. Some of these are formal graduate certificate, masters and even doctoral programmes. The literature on appropriate pedagogy for teaching in universities and on student learning has expanded dramatically over the past ten years and large amounts of material are also available on the World Wide Web.

Still, the typical reality is of individual academics going about their teaching with varying degrees of success, constrained by increasing teaching loads, greater student numbers, often less than adequate teaching facilities, and growing demands to perform at higher levels in all aspects of academic life. So why do we teach the way we teach? Is it a treadmill of our own or someone else's design? Are we consciously trying to maximise our students' learning? What are we actually trying to achieve?

In sorting out our answers to these questions we may turn in various directions for enlightenment. What theories or concepts help make sense of how we teach? For example, are we constructivists? What values do we employ in our teaching? What personal philosophy, or religion even, lies behind what we do? What of the pragmatics of survival as an academic? Do these override all other considerations? How much does the culture of the discipline, or the department, influence our teaching practices? And what of our understanding of the learning needs of our students? What of our students as people?

Reflection on these issues may help us come to understand better what it means to engage in the scholarship of teaching.